Mailbox: 02.03.10-02.09.10

No Phony

Last week we posted a personal note from Rakesh Satyal after learning of J.D. Salinger’s death. A reader named David N. took the time to comment: “J.D Salinger will always be my favorite author. The time that I’ve read his literary works was the time that I’ve came to realize so many wonderful things in life. At first, I hated to read books but when my aunt gave me a book written by Salinger, it truly inspired me... I didn’t care too much for Catcher in the Rye, or Holden Caufield, but I understand the book’s impact, and note the sadness at the passing of J.D. Salinger.

“I’m not going to get payday loans to buy his collected works—and I think teen angst...was better channeled by others. I’ve always thought Hunter Thompson and Chuck Palahniuk were better articulators of the fallacy of the modern world. I do always appreciate a good literary slap in the face to the emptiness of the status quo. Wherever you are, Sir J.D Salinger, you will always be an inspiration to everyone!”

Mel Gibson is Gay

“I enjoy Armond White comments, but unfortunately he has little to no historical knowledge of the relationship between Roman Catholicism or in the case of Mel Gibson, Irish Catholicism and art culture (“Power and Passion,” Jan. 27-Feb. 2). As a Roman Catholic, I saw The Passion of Christ as a film made by a psyche that is sexually emasculated. The Passion has the tone of a homosexual porno film: brute, violent and representing the ultimate violation of the flesh. The ascetic tradition where boys are forced to live a life removed from the beautiful arts are all rife with homosexuality. Like the muscle-bound jocks’ banter in the locker room, their narcissism is essentially gay.

The Passion is pure psychological displacement as was his tirade against the Jews and his quote of Diogenes. Mel Gibson is essentially a coward who dealt the religion card from the bottom of the deck. And like all who have partitioned their psyches, he is a very dangerous man who will constantly revisit his neurosis in the futile hope to cleanse it. But he is only scratching a mosquito bite and making it worse. Unfortunately as Freud noted, psychoanalysis does not work on the Irish. Mel Gibson is garbage. As for you, Armond, sweetheart, I suggest you wash your soul.”—Steven Carinci, the Bronx

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